I won’t forget my week among the Standing Rock protectors
Rachael parks the truck by the river and we all walk to the shore. We look up at the top of the hill. The sheriff’s department is present, and there are a few snipers behind rolls of razor wire.
Among the protesters, I see only unarmed people — men and women, elders and children, standing and looking quietly at the deputies or saying prayers. We walk to the front and stand in a line.
A white guy walks up and asks me, “Can you take this banner?”
“Sure,” I answer. Then I hesitate. “Wait, what does it say?”
“Water is life,” he tells me.
“Oh, OK, yeah!”
It’s Thanksgiving week, and I’m with my friend Rachael Falcon and her three daughters to protest the Dakota Access pipeline.
She’s already traveled once to Cannon Ball, North Dakota, on the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Reservation, a few miles down the road from the Oceti Sakowin camp. I’d said I wanted to go along if she went back, and now we find ourselves unrolling this sign on land protesters have occupied almost half the year. In July, the tribe filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in order to stop construction of Energy Transfer Partners’ oil line, and the encampment sprang up. The pipeline, according to the lawsuit, “threatens the Tribe’s environmental and economic well-being, and would damage and destroy sites of great historic, religious, and cultural significance to the Tribe.”
Water is life.
The day after Thanksgiving, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers district commander John W. Henderson writes a letter to the Standing Rock Sioux, saying that he is “closing the portion of the Corps-managed federal property north of the Cannonball River to all public use and access.” Tension runs higher. The protesters must leave by December 5.
A day before the slated eviction, though, will come a significant reprieve: The Department of the Army announces that it won’t allow pipeline drilling under a dammed section of the Missouri River. It says it would look for alternative routes for the $3.7 billion Dakota Access pipeline.
Whether the Donald Trump White House finds a way around this remains to be seen, but it seems clear that the fight isn’t over. This excerpt from my journal of the trip, along with the photos here, doesn’t record a victory. It simply documents how this protest looked to me — and, I hope, calls more people to watch what happens next, and to act.
Sunday, November 20
I’ve been following the Standing Rock situation for about a year, doing what I can to support the cause and signal-boost from home. It seems a no-brainer, wanting to protect sacred ground and water from being poisoned by an oil pipeline. Rachael and I text back and forth tonight as people live-tweet and share Facebook videos showing DAPL and law enforcement using water cannons, mace, tear gas, percussion grenades and rubber bullets on the peaceful, prayerful, unarmed water protectors. We both want to leave right now.
Tuesday, November 22
They’re attacking Oceti Sakowin, the camp we’re headed to, where Rachael was just last month. Adrenaline’s been high since Sunday, and it’s taken all of my will to focus and finish up work tasks Monday and today. Driving to work this morning, I pick up more medical supplies from every pharmacy along the way. Checking the news, it’s clear that people have been injured; it sounds like one girl might lose her arm. A couple of elders nearly died.
Some townspeople in Lawrence are showing support: Monday night, I got a discount on chemical masks and safety goggles from a locally owned hardware store after the owner figures out where I’m going. At work, my co-workers have brought me more than $200 to help the camp buy whatever is needed most.
When I get to Rachael’s, she’s packing the truck, Tetris-style, stopping only to retrieve Rachael’s girls’ kitten and puppy, who seem as determined as the girls to join us and keep burrowing into any available space. I take a turn removing animals to make room for a food bag, a medical bag, a 2-gallon water jug, my duffel and my sleeping bag. We are packed to the gills.
We get on the road from Lawrence about 1 p.m. and drive nine hours through rain and sleet to Wisconsin, to pick up Rachael’s middle daughter and a few more items from the girls’ father. I’m a little nervous, but with two adults, one of us will always be able to make sure the girls are safe. They were adamant about going.
Wednesday, November 23
The closer we get to Standing Rock, the more I start to feel noticed by townspeople. In Mobridge, South Dakota, where we stop for gas, a cashier sees the KU logo on my jacket and calls out, “Rock Chalk! I love the Jayhawks!” We chat and, in a roundabout way, she wishes us well on our trip. But one customer leaves the gas station and hurries to catch up with us in his pickup as we pull back onto the highway. Glaring at both of us in the front seat, he guns his engine and motions for me to roll down the window. We ignore him, but he continues to gun his engine and ride too close, peeling off just before the city limits.
It’s 9 p.m. when we see the entrance for Oceti Sakowin. We’re questioned and given a once-over by a guard at the gatehouse, then we drive on slowly, allowing for a smudging of sage and a blessing from another guard.
I’ve seen pictures of camp in the daytime, but it’s more than tripled since last month. Roads lead in every direction, and despite the DAPL floodlights it’s still too dark to make out landmarks. We can hear drums and singing coming from the sacred fire circle. We barely see low-lying tents before we’re almost on top of them. Rachael eventually parks by two community water tanks, and we decide to sleep in the truck. She hangs a Haskell Indian Nations University flag from a side window, and we make a nest of quilts and blankets for the girls in the back.
Thanksgiving Day
After the girls wake up, we walk around looking for breakfast and the medic tent, passing vehicles with license plates from nearly every state. I want to drop off these supplies as soon as possible. We get directions, but just as I set out with the bags, a young guy rides by on a horse, announcing,“Women with children need to get to the dome now!”
Someone has heard of a possible raid. I drop off the supply bags at the medic tent on my way to the dome. Once there, people relay messages from the front: Women and children with cars are told to head across the bridge onto the reservation. There is also a caravan of vehicles with room for women with children who don’t have a ride. We herd the girls back into the truck and follow the line of cars leaving camp.
After we get across the Cannonball River bridge, they sound the all-clear; whatever situation was building has been resolved. I check my phone, which I’d turned on just long enough to text Rachael, and find it drained and shutting down. Rachael has asked around and found where the Ho-Chunk camp is, so we look for three tents with the Ho-Chunk flag out front. We find and note the location, but there’s already an action planned, so we drive on to Turtle Island,
It’s here that the five of us unroll the water banner and hold it up. The DAPL guy with the bullhorn is yelling nonstop:
“We see you people walking around carrying bottles of liquid with rubber gloves! If you continue to handle those bottles, it WILL be seen as an aggressive act! You are forcing us to take action! We will be forced to defend ourselves!”
I look around. It’s cold, so people are wearing gloves. Heavy-duty, water-resistant gloves, in case the water cannons or tear gas return. And they’re drinking bottled water.
While we stand with the banner, one guy runs a few feet up the hill, against the sheriff’s orders and against the wishes of the rest of the protectors.
“Agitator, agitator!” a woman yells from the shore. “We don’t work on our own! You are not helping your people!”
He hesitates, then does a sideways shuffle dance. Two men approach him and quietly convince him to come back down. The bullhorn guy is very excited; this seems to be what he’s been waiting for. He seems disappointed when the guy gives the others a bear hug and allows himself to be escorted back down the hill.
Friday, November 25
Once the sun is up, I snap awake and am ready to go. I grab coffee from the lean-to by the sacred fire and, after an orientation meeting, check around to see where help is needed. The morning is spent unloading firewood, riding the phone-charger bike on Facebook Hill and picking up wood chips around the camp to use for kindling. Other places, people are sorting donated clothes, preparing food, and winterizing tents and huts with tarps and hay bales.
We meet other protectors camping with us: Tena, Tracy, Casey. We decide to go back to Turtle Island with the banner, but when we get there the mood is different.
During the night, Morton County and friends have destroyed the bridge to the hill, run razor wire across the shore, and punched holes in the bottom of all the canoes. They seem to have no qualms about destroying property. We go back to camp and take spit baths and prepare for another night in the tent. More campers come to sit around the fire and share stories. We hear about the guys sitting in trucks on the bridge, supposedly National Guard people. But the veterans in the camp say the uniforms are at least two styles out of date. Maybe they’re just more hired muscle.
Justina, one of the Ho-Chunk campers, and I trade stories around fire and get to know each other, and then she talks to Rudy, a Lakota medicine man, for a while. I talk with the Latinx guy sitting to my right, Victor, who’s come here from California, and describe the anger I felt looking at the snipers and the bullhorn guy. He reminds me that we have to look at them with love, that they are being prayed for even as they intimidate, threaten and hurt the protectors. I resolve to keep this in mind, but it’s hard.
Saturday, November 26
After breakfast, we take the banner and walk up to the 1806 bridge. It’s mostly women, mostly Native, and everyone stays peaceful. I remember what Victor said and try to keep anger out of my mind as I look back at the men on the bridge.
When it comes time for lunch, we walk back to the camp and find a place that’s giving away buffalo burgers. As we stand in line, I get to know Gladys, one of the Ho-Chunk women. A First Nations woman standing with us, Dar, has come down from Canada and been in the camp for a while. She relates some stories about camp life, along with mixed feelings about having so many non-Natives in camp. On the one hand, it’s good to see support from outside the community. On the other, some white people have had to be asked to behave and not take over Native spaces.
Around this time, word is starting to go out that the Army will evict everyone on December 5. Considering there are hundreds of veterans on the way to camp on December 4, this raises questions about what might happen. We’ve seen what law enforcement is capable of. The protectors staying past next week say they will stand strong.
Back at camp, Tracy and I help winterize Sharon’s hut and the supply tent, while Sharon and Gladys make a supply run to Bismarck with the money I collected from work. After that, I gather more wood and help with dinner. Cathy and Jory come back from organizing the kitchen and making dinner at the veteran’s tent.
We all meet up around the fire, and I get to hear what happened last night, when I heard yells from the bridge. Several Native veteran women went up on the bridge, right up to the barricades. They stayed quiet and peaceful, but the guards yelled themselves hoarse as the women prayed.
“Terrorized by a bunch of old women,” Tena says with a chuckle.
Rachael and I have to head back to Kansas in the morning, so we clean out the back of the truck and try to get as much as we can packed and sorted before bed. It turns out her middle daughter is coming back with us, which will shorten our return trip by a few hours. None of us really wants to leave, but we say our goodbyes in the morning and promise to keep in touch with new friends.
Sunday, November 27
Driving back through the reservation during the day, we see that someone has attached letters that spell out “DAPL IS” over the “Leaving Standing Rock Indian Reservation” sign.
